Gold bug Peter Schiff has fingered Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor in a new attack, accusing him of manipulating the Bitcoin market. The allegations came after Bitcoin’s sharp rise to a new all-time high of $106,000. According to Thiel, the company’s increased Bitcoin purchase and their pattern of doing it at intervals is a calculated move. He feels that the intention of Saylor and MicroStrategy is to increase the asset’s price as high as they can.
Talking about the recent price surge, he predicted that the buyer that caused it would be Saylor and his company. Most likely, we’ll find out tomorrow that Saylor was the buyer. That seems to be the trend—it’s happened the last five Mondays in a row,” he said. One can always credit him for being consistent in his allegations, noting in the past that Bitcoin investments drive funds away from the sectors that need them.
Microstrategy continues Bitcoin buying spree
Microstrategy began purchasing Bitcoin in July, buying 12,222 Bitcoin for over $800 million. The company bought it at a rate of $65,880, putting its entire cache at 226,500 BTC. The total cost of the entire cache was $8.3 billion at the time. While details about its purchases in August and September were a bit unclear, the company went all in in December.
On December 6, Microstrategy bought 21,550 Bitcoin, spending $2.1 billion to purchase the asset. The recent purchase makes it the fifth consecutive purchase on a Monday, putting Peter Schiff not far from the truth.
Microstrategy currently holds 423, 650 BTC, with the recent $100,000 asset price putting its entire cache at $46.5 billion. Saylor has also mentioned that the company is open to making more purchases, noting that it is ready to now buy the asset above $100,000. If the buying spree remains consistent, it won’t be long before the firm’s Bitcoin cache hits $50 billion.
Market reaction trails Microstrategy’s purchases
Microstrategy’s Bitcoin investment has always caused comments and arguments across the market. The comments are always intense, with most of them drawing parallels between Saylor’s buying habits and Bitcoin’s price performance. While people like Good Dad Bad Dad author Robert Kiyosaki have hailed the move, others like Peter Schiff have always shown concerns.
While Bitcoin is decentralized and lightly regulated, it is still a prime candidate for market manipulation. Common schemes like wash trading pump and dump, and spoofing have been done on a small scale with other assets, institutional actors may use Bitcoin as a target practice on a larger scale. With most people arguing that institutional adoption pushes Bitcoin’s legitimacy, others feel like it undermines its decentralized nature.
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